The floor is incredibly low too, unfortunately. Flynn could suck, Lynch could be lazy, Rice could once again suffer an injury, while the defense could take a step backward because of poor offseason decisions. Considering the schedule and all of the uncertainties, it's more likely that the Seahawks will finish third in the NFC West.

We drafted Irvin and Wagner, and signed Jason Jones. We returned the same secondary, Wagner was replacing Heater, and Jones and Irwin were not coming in as starters but as part of the rush package (so they were really replacing , say Hargrove and Brock). So really the only change was Wagner for Heater. On the other hand, the young secondary would have a year more experience, as would KJ. You could argue that we had not improved it much if we signed and drafted the wrong players, but you would really struggle to say that we had regressed.

This is why you really should not pay any attention to 'NFL experts' who cover the whole league. They can't possibly have detailed knowledge on all teams and their players. Whenever somebody links to an article by someone like Peter King, it's only because 'hey, someone knows who we are', and it's never 'cos they tell us something we didn't know. I like ESPN's way of splitting their guys to each division, so they know the rosters inside out, and the only time you read ignorant pieces is when they let one of the writers who covers another division to say something about the Hawks, like that asshat Seifert. Read the local guys and Sando and ignore all others until draft time.